I find that the quickest way to give myself a break is not the vodka in my drawer, and that’s not to say that I have one, or that it is pink lemonade-flavored, but rather to check into my Facebook account and see what’s recently been posted.
Yesterday I saw several short videos. One of them showed baby elephants bathing in a washtub, another showed men from a foreign country digging with their hands frantically trying to free an infant covered in rubble, and yet another showed fellows helping a mother duck save her babies who had fallen through a grate. I even found a laugh-out-loud posting that read… “They’re gathering information by going through our trash. Learning. Plotting. Raccoons haven’t forgotten that we used to wear them as hats.”
Growing up as an only child, I found many ways to entertain myself. Of course, as a baby boomer, I was (and still am) a television addict. To this day I still find comfort and joy in the chuckles brought forward from re-runs of my favorite shows. Most coveted by me are episodes of I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best.
As I got older, I found humor and life lessons while watching MASH and All in the Family, and got a dose of grown-up funny business while Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was on the air from 1967 to 1973. I loved Laugh-In. I didn’t always get the joke, but somehow I knew it was naughty. Hmmm. I wonder if the content used in the old Laugh-In skits would be perceived as funny by today’s audiences, or have we become too sophisticated to enjoy Sammy Davis, Jr. saying “Here come the judge,” and/or are we too jaded to get a kick out of Ruth Buzzi acting shocked when her want-to-be suitor asked her if she’d “Like a bite of my Walnetto?”
I hope that we can remember those good old days of laughs brought to us by brilliant men and women like Red Skelton, Carol Burnett, Milton Berle, Lucille Ball, Bob Newhart and Ernie Kovacs. I hate to think that the younger generations may collectively dislodge their funny bones and instead, metaphorically, sit motionless in the quagmire of insipid reality shows trying to stay stimulated while becoming nothing more than voyeurs viewing the sorrows and missteps of others.
For goodness sake, let’s tell the younger generations about those mentioned above as well as Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller and Steve Allen. They were the entertainers. They helped us make fun of ourselves, not of the misfortunes of others.
